Month: March 2016

I’m expanding my experiences to speak at different SQL Saturdays this year, and I’m very excited to say that I will be speaking at SQLSaturday Boston on March 19th and SQLSaturday Maine on June 4th.

My session at both SQL Saturdays will focus on using BimlScript to create good ETL patterns. SSIS has been around for a while now, but I see people making the same mistakes that are easily resolved. One of the biggest mistakes is simple inconsistency. BimlScript supports consistency, and forces the developer to (when used correctly) recognize patterns and reuse them. This helps us to solve (and share the solution to) known problems, make it easier for junior developers to solve those problems and learn why our solution works, and move on to new and more interesting challenges. And if we find a flaw in our pattern, it’s a quick update to the Biml pattern and regeneration of packages to make the change to all applicable packages.

Everyone involved in creating and supporting your SSIS projects can appreciate consistent design patterns. It makes your patterns more tested (by reuse in multiple situations) and reduces the learning curve for development and support. BimlScript plus a good ETL framework facilitates quicker start and completion of SSIS projects. As a consultant, I appreciate the consistency when I take over a project (usually, I’m working on phase 2 when someone else built phase 1) and already know how it works. And if the framework is slightly different from what I’m used to (there are valid reasons to build things differently on occasion), I can look at the Biml from the previous work and easily read what’s going on. Have you ever tried to read the XML code of an SSIS package? It’s ugly. Biml is much easier to read because it doesn’t include position information for the UI and many other attributes that aren’t helpful. And because the code is all on one page, I have less chance of missing a setting that was hiding in the advanced properties somewhere in an existing package.

If you are an SSIS architect and you aren’t familiar with Biml, I urge you to look into it. BimlScript.com has a great learning plan to help you get started and become comfortable using Bimlscript. In my opinion, it is currently the best (and in many cases free!) way to create your SSIS framework and design patterns.